Barges

I would like to tell you about a little miracle.

My third year of law school I felt that I should not worry about getting a job. This worried me for obvious reasons, and as the year progressed I started applying for all sorts of random jobs, and then had the distinct impression to STOP! Thanks to my brother Russell, I ended up getting into the Presidential Management Fellowship program, got a call on my way to the temple to offer me a job, and then while in the temple felt like this is the job I was to take. Easy enough.

Problem was that after I moved to DC and started my job, I hated it. I thought it would get better, but it didn’t. For months and months I wanted to quit and would get the answer NO. I came to terms with the fact that I was blessed to have a job at all, and doubly blessed to have a job that allowed me to be home by 5 every day. But still, I could not wrap my mind around why I had felt so guided to this job.

My boss figured out I hated it and let me go be a prosecutor for a while. I loved it, and thought maybe that was the whole point. Then I came back from being a prosecutor and my job was better—they put me on a totally different project—and I figured I was a genius because I was getting paid the same as when I was a prosecutor but did 1/10th of the work and had zero stress in my life. But I still felt like my life lacked some serious meaning if this was to be my career, and my fellowship was quickly about to end.

After spending a week at work reading Gone with the Wind online (don’t judge—I had nothing else to do!), my boss called me in to her office and said she had arranged for me to spend the last two months of my fellowship doing a rotation at another department in our same agency. I readily agreed—happy at the prospect of having anything to do. I show up to that fellowship the first day and am told by every single person “what are you doing in this department? You should be working somewhere else,” and was then asked about my knowledge of desktop publishing and computer programming. I said that would be none, but I spent the next month figuring it out. Random!

By now I am also starting to stress because I have NO JOB in a month. My boss is not responding to my questions about whether I have a job/if I should be looking for new jobs. I start applying and interviewing and stressing and figuring out life and where I will move come September when I am unemployed. I even interviewed for a job being a secretary at the temple, even though it paid half of what I made. Luckily President Tingey—an attorney himself—thought better of my ruining my career with that move.

I promise the point of this story is coming soon.

Although I was stressed, I kept on praying and feeling the same as I did two years earlier—that I did not need to be worrying. So I tried to stop. Then one random Friday I go to work at my random rotation and am in the hallway and am approached by a man I have never seen before. He asks if I am Rachel and says he wants to talk to me and I realize he is a big deal boss around here. The next week we have a meeting and he talks to me about work and introduces me to this woman. I talk to her for an hour and we laugh and she works for this perfect little department doing the most interesting work and has the best co-workers. It sounds like an unbelievable dream come true. She likes me but says they don’t have a spot for me, but I should find a job elsewhere and hopefully someday I can transfer over there. I pray that someday, somehow, I can go work for her.

A week later I still don’t know if I have a job. I run into this woman again and she says somehow they have a spot for me, and I can start immediately. I tell my boss I am going there, and she says it is good because her department is probably being dissolved anyway!

I am now starting week three at this new job. The work is interesting, the people are great, the hours are ideal. It’s perfect. And it just fell into my lap.

But why barges? Perhaps my favorite of scriptures is Ether 6 in the Book of Mormon. It tells of the Jaredite barges. The Jaredites trusted God when they were commanded to build barges and sail to the promised land. They had no control over how these barges moved or where they went—they were guided by God. And for much of the chapter the barges “were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind. And it came to pass that they were many times buried in the depths of the sea, because of the mountain waves which broke upon them, and also the great and terrible tempests which were caused by the fierceness of the sea.”

What???? God told them not to worry about it, and they are being buried in the depths of the sea? But don’t worry—good news—“the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters.” God was using the crazy winds to take them to the promised land. They had to move a serious distance to get where God wanted them to go, and He knew the best way to take them there—even if it was a little crazy sometimes. Or all of the time.

I’ve loved this scripture for years, but only recently was my attention brought to verse 12: “And they did land upon the shore of the promised land. And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land, and did humble themselves before the Lord, and did shed tears of joy before the Lord, because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them.”

And so I feel. I realize that my job situation is of little interest or importance to anyone but me. But for me, this is a miracle…and perhaps the greater miracle is how much God cares about my life, my job, everything. I am truly humbled by the tender mercies of the Lord—that He should take care of me always, so perfectly, even while I am running around trying to fix things myself because I think they are broken. We must look through the storms of life with the eyes of faith, and then step back and stand in awe at the majesty of God. “Know ye not that ye are in the hands of God?”